Kaelen leaned against the stone wall at the dead end, gasping for breath.
The fragments in his shirt were still pulsing. That heartbeat-like rhythm spread from his chest to his entire body, overlapping with his own heartbeat until he couldn't tell them apart. The warmth of the golden light still lingered in his palms. His fingertips tingled.
But there were no pursuers behind him.
He listened for a moment. Faint shouts and footsteps echoed from deeper in the tunnels—far away. They didn't know where he had run. This mine was too large, too full of crosscuts. A maze built beneath the earth.
Kaelen slid down the wall and sat on the cold stone floor.
He looked at his hands.
The cuts were really gone. Not scabbed over. Not healed. Gone. The skin was as smooth as if it had never been broken. He turned his palms over, looked at the backs of his hands. Stared for a long time.
Then he laughed.
"Hahaha!"
The sound echoed off the tunnel walls—raw, broken, almost hysterical. It was not a happy laugh. It was the laugh of a man who had spent three years watching his own body rot, only to find it whole again.
"I'm alive," he whispered. His voice echoed in the tunnel. "I'm really alive."
The fragment in his shirt pulsed again, as if answering.
Kaelen pulled out the largest piece and held it up to his eyes. In the darkness, it gave off a faint golden glow, illuminating half his face. The veins moved slowly beneath the surface—alive.
He remembered the vision from before.
The throne. The kneeling warriors. The armor of starlight. And the name—
Chaos Sovereign.
He didn't know what it meant. But he knew that these four fragments—three small, one large—had already changed him. His body was no longer the body of a waste. The meridians that had been sealed for eighteen years now had cracks in them.
It wasn't enough. Far from enough.
But he knew the direction now.
Kaelen tucked the fragments back into his shirt and stood up. He couldn't stay here long. Gareth would soon discover fragments were missing—dozens of them from the underground cavern. And the guards had seen the golden light. They would report it.
He had to go back.
Back to the other slaves. Back to the chains. Back to Gareth's whip. He had to keep pretending to be a waste, keep digging, keep enduring.
Until he was strong enough.
Kaelen took a deep breath and started walking.
---
Morning came slowly to the mine.
Kaelen returned to the dungeon before dawn. The other slaves were still asleep, snoring in layers. He slipped back into his corner, hid the fragments beneath the straw, and wrapped the chains back around his ankles.
He had barely finished when the dungeon door burst open.
Gareth stood in the doorway, six fully armed guards behind him. Their torches lit up the dungeon like daylight. The slaves woke up, groggy and blinking, sitting up on their piles of moldy straw.
"Everyone up!" Gareth roared. "Line up! One by one!"
The slaves scrambled to their feet, chains clanking. They formed a ragged line in the open space. Gareth started searching the first slave—roughly, flipping through every piece of clothing, every pocket.
Kaelen stood near the middle of the line. His face was blank, but his heart was pounding so hard it hurt.
He didn't know if the guards had seen his face.
First. Second. Third.
Gareth searched thoroughly. He found a few small pieces of ore hidden on a couple of slaves—men who had been trying to save up for a scrap of food. Gareth said nothing. He just had them dragged aside and whipped twenty times each. Their screams echoed through the dungeon.
Kaelen's eyelid twitched.
His turn.
Gareth stopped in front of him. The scarred face was inches from his own. Kaelen could smell tobacco and cheap liquor on his breath.
"Where were you last night?" Gareth asked.
"The dungeon, Overseer," Kaelen said, head lowered. "Sleeping."
"Anyone vouch for you?"
Kaelen hesitated for a heartbeat. Then the slave next to him—an old man named Orin—spoke up.
"He was here," Orin said, his voice raspy. "I woke up in the middle of the night. Saw him in his corner."
Kaelen didn't turn to look at Orin. He didn't dare.
Gareth stared at Kaelen for a few seconds. Then he began the search. His hands patted down Kaelen's ragged clothes, flipping through folds, checking every seam. Kaelen held his breath.
Nothing.
He had hidden the fragments in the dungeon—under the straw, inside a rat hole.
Gareth finished. Found nothing. He grunted, stepped back, and moved to the next slave.
Kaelen stood still, his palms slick with sweat.
---
The search lasted half an hour.
Gareth found more than a dozen hidden ore fragments. Beat more than a dozen men. But he found nothing "suspicious." He was clearly frustrated, but he had no reason to continue.
"Listen up!" Gareth stood in the center of the dungeon, his voice like a hammer on stone. "Last night, someone stole Chaos Fragments from this mine and injured three guards. If anyone knows who it was, speak now. I'll give you three days of full meals."
No one spoke.
"No?" Gareth's eyes swept across every face. "Fine. Then don't blame me. From today, the daily quota is fifteen jin. Anyone who falls short gets double lashes."
A suppressed groan went through the slaves. But no one dared protest.
Gareth left with his guards. The dungeon door slammed shut. Darkness returned.
Kaelen leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. His fingers, hidden beneath the straw, touched the fragments. They were still there. Warm. Pulsing. Safe.
He opened his eyes and looked at Orin.
The old slave had turned his back, curled in his own corner like a silent stone.
"Thank you," Kaelen whispered.
Orin didn't turn around. But Kaelen saw his shoulders shift—a nod, maybe.
Kaelen remembered his name.
---
After sunrise, the slaves were herded into the tunnels.
Gareth had raised the quota to fifteen jin. Everyone was frantic. The sound of picks against stone was twice as密集 as usual. The air was thick with dust and sweat.
Kaelen dug too. But his mind wasn't on the ore.
He was feeling his body.
Those partially opened meridians—he could feel them now. Like new paths inside him, still narrow, still blocked in places, but real. Whenever he swung his pick with force, a faint thread of warmth trickled through them.
Not spiritual energy. Not yet.
But it was more than he had ever had.
He dug and thought. How did he use the four fragments? What was the "Chaos Sovereign" in the vision? And the voice—the one that had whispered "You do not belong here" since he was a child—was that connected to the fragments too?
Too many questions. Too few answers.
But he knew one thing: he needed more fragments.
There were hundreds more in the underground cavern. He would go back. But not now—Gareth's people were watching every slave. He had to wait. Wait for the heat to die down. Wait for the guards to relax.
While he waited, there was one thing he could do.
Cultivate.
He didn't know how. He had never learned any techniques. But he had a feeling the fragments could teach him.
He touched the fragment hidden in his shirt—he had brought the smallest one with him, tucked into a fold. The other three were still in the rat hole beneath the dungeon straw.
The small fragment pulsed against his skin. A stream of warmth flowed from it, into his fingers, up his arm, into his chest.
Kaelen took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
In the noisy tunnel, amid the clang of picks and the shouts of overseers, he began the first real cultivation of his life.
---
What he didn't know was that in that moment, the golden veins on the fragment hidden in his shirt flashed.
Just for an instant.
But in that instant, the temperature in the tunnel seemed to drop.
The slave next to him shivered, glanced around, saw nothing.
Then went back to digging.
In the dungeon, the three fragments hidden in the rat hole flashed at the same moment—as if something connected them, across distance.
And deep beneath the Blackstone Mine, in the cavern filled with fragments, hundreds of pieces pulsed once in unison.
As if something was waking up.
---
At the mine entrance, Gareth stood in the shadows, watching the slaves dig.
Beside him stood a man in a black robe. He was tall and thin, his face hidden beneath a hood.
"Are you sure it was here?" the robed man asked, his voice low.
"Positive," Gareth said. "That golden light last night came from deep underground. The whole mine shook."
The robed man was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Lock down all exits. No one leaves."
"Already done."
"And," the robed man turned, his eyes glowing faintly beneath the hood, "give me the names of every slave who has ever found 'that kind' of fragment."
Gareth blinked. "What kind?"
The robed man didn't answer. He walked into the depths of the mine, his footsteps fading into the darkness.
Gareth stood there, his scarred face twitching.
He had a feeling this was much bigger than he had thought.